A few minutes after Wal-Mart store employees started letting the crowd in 12 people at a time, the security guard manning the front of the line at the Panorama City store switched between two instructions to the crowd. "Calm down, people. You have to wait when you get inside anyway," and "Walk, don't run!" Stores across the Southland were opening up before midnight Thursday. Store officials were wary after incidents in years past, such as one last Thanksgiving at a Wal-Mart in Porter Ranch; a shopper there pepper sprayed fellow customers, injuring at least seven of them.

In Catharine Hamm's column "Causing a Stink on the Airplane" [On the Spot, April 8] regarding the appropriate place on an airplane to change a baby's diaper, the issue of hygiene was not addressed. I am appalled that the cabin crew would permit a baby to be changed on a passenger seat. I, for one, would dread being the person on the next flight to sit there. After all, not only can you not avoid touching surfaces that most certainly have been contaminated, this is the place where you will be served refreshments or, on a long flight in business or first class, a full meal.

Diaper bags are great but they don't have a place for the most important element: the baby. The Sidekick Bliss does, featuring an integrated baby carrier/sling built into the top of the bag. Just clip the adjustable waist strap around your middle, tightening to secure, and pull out the sewn-in baby carrier/sling from its zippered compartment. Then place the baby on the top of the bag, pull the adjustable shoulder strap attached to the top of the sling over the baby and over your head, tightening the strap to secure.

Question: I recently flew first class from Orlando, Fla., to Los Angeles. There was a couple with a little girl, maybe 2 years old, and the kid screeched the whole time. The parents never showed her a picture book, gave her toys or did anything to distract her. I could have ignored the screeching, but when they changed her diaper, the whole first class filled with an unpleasant stench. As a mom and grandma, I felt this was disgusting. Maybe there should be a rule that kids needs to be changed in the toilet area.

November 14, 2011 | By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog

Jay-Z sees himself changing diapers in the very near future. GQ's man of the year says that he fully intends to be an active and involved father when wife Beyonce, due in February, gives birth to their first child. "Providing -- that's not love," he told the magazine . " Being there -- that's more important. " For many men, though, fatherhood may be synonymous with finances. According to health writer Jeannine Stein , "a study published online in March in the Journal of Advanced Nursing found that among 66 couples, men were freaked out about family and pregnancy issues and generally felt overloaded.

Karla Rendon stood in front of the vending machine at Maplewood Mall in St. Paul, Minn., staring at an assortment of items ? diapers, baby wipes, sippy cups, bottles, grape juice and diaper rash ointment. Just what a mother shopping with her 13-month-old baby needed. "I wish there had been one of these when I was at the Mall of America," said Rendon of Maplewood, Minn., recalling a recent excursion with daughters Makayla, 5, and Daisy, 13 months. On that day, Rendon had forgotten Daisy's bottle.

Swimming may be fun (if you like that kind of thing), but it also carries risks…. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May issued a report showing that one out of eight public pool inspections in 13 states had resulted in immediate closures due to serious code violations. Many of these pools, especially those designed for children, had "disinfectant violations." Improper disinfectant and pH levels (a measure of acidity) can result in transmission of germs that can cause diarrhea, the CDC noted.

On a recent Friday night, a very pregnant Sheila Dos Santos and her husband were two-thirds of the way through an hour and a half cloth diapering workshop, trying to wrap their heads around the myriad diapering options available to the modern parent. Laid out on the large coffee table in front of them were dozens of types of diapers and covers and inserts, as well as a plastic baby doll to try them on. "I'm so overwhelmed," said Dos Santos, looking down at the 11-page booklet she held in her hands.

Could this be the first Twitter baby? Twitter Chief Executive Evan Williams and his wife, Sara Williams, just had their first baby, an event shared with more than 16,000 of her Twitter followers from the time her water broke to baby's first diaper. The wildly popular micro-blogging website allows people to send out messages, each at a maximum of 140 characters -- about the length of a major contraction. But through it all, she kept up the tweeting. It started Monday at 8:46 p.m. when she messaged: "Dear Twitter, My water broke.

It's 30 seconds before his big rodeo ride, and Julian Apodaca looks like he wants to disappear under the wide brim of his white cowboy hat. He's staring down at his boots, tugging at his lower lip, rubbing at his teary eyes. Julian's father, a former junior bull-riding champion, has a hand on each of his 5-year-old son's shoulders. "It's OK, hijo," Vince Apodaca says as somebody plucks the hat off the boy's head and replaces it with a helmet. "Cowboy up, OK?